Learning from the Germans

In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neimans Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country CA come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rightsera South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both AmeriCAs and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary AmeriCAs are doing to confront our violent history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider the nuanced forms that evil CA assume, so that we CA recognize and avoid them in the future.